Impressionable
by detective-sweetheart
Summary: It scared me sometimes, what today's youth let themselves get talked into.


A/N: This is what happens when you give me a challenge list and sugar. Again, if you look hard enough: Munch's POV. SVU's not mine. (exits stage left)

* * *

It scared me, sometimes, the things that kids could get themselves into. Made me wonder what the world was coming to, if anything. I wanted to understand it, but at the same time, I didn't. The job was hard enough on its own; last thing I needed was to make it any more complicated. But every now and then, I would find myself sitting in the squad room, just waiting for an answer that would never come. Useless, really, and I knew it, but I couldn't help it.

Maybe it was because I had no kids of my own. I had the feeling that it was this that made me wonder. The things I saw in the city…Well, it was worse than Baltimore, and yet it wasn't. I didn't know why. Doubted I'd ever figure it out, either. Back in good old Charm City, it had been straight murders. Usually there was, in the doer's eyes, anyway, a good reason for it. Other times, the motive had even us murder police confused.

But here in New York…it was one thing after another, it seemed. I knew full well I wasn't the only one affected by those cases that involved kids. I found it almost odd, considering, of course, that I had none, but in truth, it had nothing to do with anyone. They were our innocent victims, the ones who had never done anything to deserve what happened to them. The ones who did deserve to be in loving homes, with people who actually gave a damn about what happened to them, one way or the other.

It wasn't always the case. That was what bothered me. It was one of those few similarities that I could see between this place and Baltimore: for every set of good parents, there was a set of bad parents, and all it did was make me wonder what the hell these people were doing having kids in the first place. It bothered me a lot of the time, when Fin and I would find ourselves on the streets, chasing after kids who we either knew had information, or thought had information on whatever we were working. Their attitudes annoyed the hell out of Fin; I, on the other hand, found myself wanting for a better answer than the usual 'they must not have been brought up right'.

The whole thing seemed ridiculous. But the way things were in the world, well…we lived in a society that demanded perfection. While some fit that bill, most of us didn't. It scared me to see little girls and young women starving themselves to be as thin as the models they saw, and the actresses they idolized. Bothered me to see little boys and young men imitating the gangster rappers they themselves idolized. I mentioned this once to Fin, only to have him shake his head at me and say that in some cases, that sort of lifestyle were all those boys knew. And when he wasn't looking, I found myself wishing that it wasn't that way.

But it was. And it would continue to be so, as long as society pushed the standards of perfection at them, so long as there was no one to care what they did, who they talked to, where they went. It was ridiculous, at least to someone my age, someone who'd grown up mostly without the pressures of this day and age. Sometimes, I understood where it came from. Other times, I didn't, and shook my head because I thought I never would.

And every time that happened, I found myself looking back on my own childhood, before coming back to the present, wondering when things had changed, and when our youth had become so impressionable. Wondered when they had become so willing to fall for something, anything, if only it meant that they would get the so-called love and affection that all of them needed, and deserved.

Then again, I supposed it only seemed worse now because of the circumstances in which every one of us lived. But on the other hand…it still made me wonder. Each one of us, I knew, had been naïve at one point or another, but impressionable…It was a good thing, and it was a bad thing, all at the same time. Sometimes it turned out all right. Other times it didn't.

And when it didn't, well…That was usually when we were called in.


End file.
